My research uses the Current Population Survey (CPS) and the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) unit as my unit of analysis, and I need to identify both SPM units with spouses and those with cohabiting partners.
Identifying spouses within SPM units seems fairly straightforward: the variable FAMREL identifies spouses (FAMREL == 2) within families, which correspond to the SPM unit definition. Unmarried partners, though, I am less sure of. RELATE clearly identifies unmarried partners beginning in 1995, which is useful for identifying these individuals within primary families. But within sub-families, the FAMREL variable identifies spouses but not unmarried partners. At the same time, I understand that an innovation of the SPM is that its’ unit definition is inclusive of families with unmarried partners, so it seems that the Census was able to identify families with unmarried partners in order to construct the SPM unit.
Can one can identify unmarried partners within SPM units? Alternatively, is the ‘spouse’ indicator in FAMREL inclusive of unmarried partners (i.e., can unmarried partners be labeled as spouses within families)? I see that within the American Community Survey data, there is an indicator for cohabiting but unmarried partners; however, there doesn’t seem to be an equivalent variable for use in the CPS.
As an addendum to the above, as I look more closely at the data and compare the values of RELATE and FAMREL within households, I see that often when householders reside with unmarried partners, both care the value “Not a family member” for the variable FAMREL. This makes me further confused as to how families with unmarried partners are identified within SPM units (and families).
FAMREL states the person’s relationship to their Census-defined subfamily unit in FTYPE. There are five defined subfamily unit types:
- Primary family - A married couple with or without children, or one parent with one or more own never married children under 18 years old, who maintain the household.
- Related subfamily - A married couple with or without children, or one parent with one or more own never married children under 18 years old, living in a household and related to, but not including, the person or couple who maintains the household.
- Unrelated subfamily - A married couple with or without children, or a single parent with one or more own never-married children under 18 years old living in a household. Unrelated subfamily members are not related to the householder.
- Nonfamily householder - A householder living alone or where the householder shares the home exclusively with people to whom he/she is not related.
- Secondary individual - People who reside in a household, but are not related to the householder and are not unrelated subfamily members.
Following these definitions, unmarried partners are never matched into the same subfamily. If neither unmarried partners have children, they will coded as either nonfamily householders or as secondary individuals. All persons with these family types are then assigned a FAMREL value of 0 (“Not a Family Member”). If one of the unmarried partners has children, the one who is assigned as the family reference person (FAMREL = 1) will be coded as belonging to the primary family or to one of the subfamily units. Their partner will then be coded as either a nonfamily householder or as a secondary individual. The ‘spouse’ indicator in FAMREL can only refer to the married spouse of a family reference person in either the primary family or in a (un)related subfamily.
This Census Bureau Discussion Paper describes the original work to define SPM resource sharing units in 2007 when the Census Bureau began asking unmarried respondents in households with unrelated adults: “Do you have a boyfriend, girlfriend or partner in this household?” If they responded yes, the respondent was then asked to identify the cohabiting partner and the interviewer recorded the partner’s line number. This is recorded in the variable PECOHAB and reports the cohabiting partner’s LINENO value (note that this is not their PERNUM value, which is what the IPUMS family interrelationships variables such as SPLOC report). I would recommend using this self-reported cohabitor identifier in your work along with the self-reported identifier for a person’s spouse (ASPOUSE).